102 Field Battery relief in Borneo DPR/TV/280

The last Australian combat troops to leave Borneo during the current Australian commitment have pulled out of Kuching, in Borneo's Sarawak State. They are gunners of the 102nd Field Battery, Royal Australian Artillery, who have been relieved by a British artillery unit. Their guns were lifted by helicopters from forward bases and landed near the unit's rear base, about seven miles from the Kuching waterfront. While their guns waited to be loaded into the British Army landing-craft Maxwell Brander, the artillerymen lost no time in boarding the ship to settle down for their 40-hour trip back to the unit's Malayan home base in Malacca. Loading the 105mm howitzers board the landing-craft was a midnight operation, to allow the ship to leave at high tide the next day. Working at top speed, the nimble Dyak wharf labourers loaded the unit's 45 vehicles and stowed them between decks in a record 100 minutes. At high tide the next day, the 400-ton Maxwell Brander cast-off and headed downstream for the South China Sea. There to farewell the Australian gunners were some of the many friends they made during their four-month tour of operational duty in Sarawak. Among them were Mr and Mrs Jack Smith and their two children, of Tamworth NSW. Mr Smith is a Colombo Plan instructor at Kuching Trade School and the Smith house was a home away from home for many of the Australian troops. But for the gunners, the course was set for their homes in Malacca and, later this year, back in Australia.